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So - we have a piece of land & some ideas of what we need from a house & thankfully we have a great person to execute these ideas... Brian our mate from Canada has been working away with a great team of guys on many projects.
We meet with him with a bottle of red wine & some photos on our laptop to give him an idea of our style. He's never been to our house in NZ so probably doesn't have the foggiest idea of what we like or not!
Our wish list is 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, & all the other essentials, dining, living, terrace etc. We'd like to maximise both views (into town & back up into the high chaparal!), we'd like it light, with access to the outside, nothing fiddly, simple lines, on & on we blather.
Amazingly about 2 days later Brian has the first sketch. We pour over it a little, & surprisingly even with our spacially challenged, architecturally pea brained, thought processes we managed to tune in our wavelengths & see things through Brian's eyes.
We like what we see, & with a few suggestions, rebuttals & alterations we have a plan!
4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a dining/living room/kitchen, 2 stories, fountain, outside areas, garage, terrace & swimming pool!
Let the games begin!
To cut a long story short (well a little shorter that it could be) let's fast forward to July 2007. We arrived back in San Miguel (via Sweden & Austin) on 20th to find out some bad news about our piece of land.
Real estate dealings are a little different in Mexico than New Zealand. It is not uncommon to hear stories of people who think they have purchased a property, only to discover that who they bought it from didn't actually own it!
Also when you buy a piece of land you need to put a fence around it & a sign on it saying it's yours or someone else might do that. We had been told this & thought it was too ridiculous & how could that happen, so naively didn't bother to "stake our claim".
When we got back to San Miguel we discovered that someone had done just that! They had put a "fence" (well four sticks, one in each corner, with a few strands of wire strung between them). Turns out a woman - claiming to be the wife of the old man that sold us the land, had decided that the man owed her half of the land. Yikes!!
We had a few stressful days wondering what to do, I thought we should just take the fence down, but apparently we could be arrested for that since the fence was her property! We were going to start building in the next couple of weeks & needed this sorted out first so that she could have no future claim on our land.
We headed off to Mr Sanchez (our notario/lawyer) in whom we had all faith. With the assistance of an interpreter, we were informed that she had no claim at all on the land, the vendor had listed himself as a widow (ie didnt have a wife!) & we should just go ahead in good faith...fingers crossed!
All systems go - design, design, design & then build build build...
So... back to November 2005... our good friend Ashley hunted down a good piece of land for us. A tiny 200 sqM piece. In Montes de Loreto, high up on the side of a hill, looking back towards San Miguel. Behind is a big craggy out-crop with land covered in cactus & mesquite plants.
Montes de Loreto is a little colonia about 10 mins drive from the centre of town. It is a mostly Mexican neighbourhood, the streets are still dirt & all the kids play at the little soccer pitch at the top of all the streets, beside the little church hut.
There is no credit available for building houses in Mexico so people build what they can, when they can with the cash they have & whatever they have. Consequently most of the houses are brick shells or have some rooms finished & others are looking more like ruins than works in progress.
To buy the piece of land we liked, we visited Maria, she is the directora of the colonia. Which means that she has a plan of all the "lots", knows the owners of each piece & if someone wants to sell their land they let her know. She knows the "lay of the land" & all the chismo (gossip). She is also in contact with the local govt. & makes representation to them on behalf of the colonia - seeking roading improvements, etc.
Maria, the vendor, Ashley, an interpreter & us all met at our lawyer's - Notario Luis Felipe Sanchez Hernandez. A very distinguished gentle man. After much discussion, photocopying (always lots of photocopying in Mexico), & many signatures - we had a "compraventa" - which is essentially a contract of sale.
Some weeks later, after all the requisite title searches, applications to govt. & many more photocopies & signatures we had our own "escritura". Title of sale!! That all sounds very straight forward, & luckily in this case it was (touch wood), in many cases to get to the escritura stage takes months & in some cases even years, & even then when you get one it may be contested. So if you are going to scrimp on anything, don't let it be your Notario - get a goody! More on that to come...
In 1989 Steve & I were travelling in the States in a clapped out Combie. Our visas were about to expire & in those days a simple trip across the border & back was all that was required to renew one.
We decided to see a bit of Mexico & headed for Tijuana, once we got there we decided that wasn't the real Mexico & headed further south, 3 months & 10,000 miles later our love affair with Mexico was begun!
From then on we always said, "one day we'll have a couple of kids & take them to live in Mexico". 2005 rolled around, we had 2 kids aged 6 & 8 by that stage & decided that was the year.
Off we headed to Mexico for a 6 month adventure that turned into 11months. While we were there we re-visited San Miguel de Allende & that became our home for 2005. We met many good people there & bought a little piece of land. Why not? we thought - it was only US$15,000 & maybe one day we might like to live there?
Home to NZ we went to get on with our lives & forget the adventure, but we couldn't get Mexico out of our minds. So... sticking to the theme of living a life less ordinary, we sold our house in NZ, gave most of our posessions to the City Mission, farewelled our kiwi friends & family (who no doubt though we were loco!) & headed back to Mexico.
We left with just 8 suitcases of belongings, mostly toys! & had an amazing holiday with our good friends in Sweden on the way (but that's another story!) & landed back in San Miguel on 20 July 2007.
We are having many adventures here in San Miguel, all good fodder for the blogosphere, but this blog is specifically to document the construction of our new casa here in a little mexican colonia called Montes de Loreto, half way up a craggy cactus outcrop looking back into San Miguel de Allende.
